Home entertainment systems which combine Personal Computer and television functions (PC/TV systems), are increasingly becoming, generic, User interactive, multiple source and multiple destination communication devices. Such multimedia systems are required to communicate in different data formats between multiple locations for a variety of applications in response to User requests. For example, a PC/TV system may receive data from satellite or terrestrial sources comprising High Definition Television (HDTV) broadcasts, Multi-point Microwave Distribution System (MMDS) broadcasts and Digital Video Broadcasts (DVB). A PC/TV system may also receive and transmit data via telephone (e.g. the Internet) and coaxial lines (e.g. cable TV) and from both remote and local sources such as Digital Video Disk (DVD), CDROM, VHS and Digital VHS (DVHS™) type players, PCs, and many other types of sources.
Forming and processing program guide data containing program content from numerous sources for multimedia applications presents a number of problems for such a generic PC/TV entertainment system. For example, such a system may be required to process multimedia content including audio clips, video clips, animation, still images, text and other types of data encoded in different data formats. Specifically, difficulties arise in structuring program content and program guide data to facilitate the acquisition and decoding of multimedia content of different data format and from different sources. These problems and derivative problems are addressed by a system according to the present invention.